Consternation surrounding the 8x8 Class system and how to move forward.

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Disagree. Rogue is, in fact, one of the primary reasons for this.

If Rogue has an Augment School, that interacts with the 'Resource' of the Primary Archetype, not only is this likely to be something that base Rogue does not even need a lot of the time, it is also likely to be implemented very differently by what the Primary is.

A Fighter/Rogue (ShadowBlade? NightBlade? why have I seen 'NightBlade' recently?) who has an augment on one of their Forms, which then gets the 'Resource Consumption type of augment' activated, could get, say, 'Damage Penetration + Enmity/Threat Generation down'. This effect is useful as a self-targeted, 'on demand' effect that is also allowed to be relatively powerful and 'under the player's control'.

A Cleric/Rogue (Shadow Disciple) with the same Augment might use it on Divine Infusion and care a lot more about the Enmity/Threat Generation down.

While Rogue/Rogue would likely have a use for this Augment on some things, it might not want it to activate as a 'Resource Consumption' type. Therefore you end up making the decision about whether this augment should exist or how it works moreso based on how other Archetypes will use it, than how Rogue will use it or even a single thing about how Rogue works other than 'Yeah they should probably have Damage Pen and some Threat control' as a vague idea.

Furthermore, I can say that I would personally be dissatisfied otherwise, so for me, it is not a luxury. I absolutely want to be a Healer, but I refuse to be a healer without Stealth/Misdirection in Ashes of Creation. I consider that aspect to be just as important a part of my playstyle as the healing, and from my data gathering, at least 14% of players somewhat share this feeling enough to note it. I'd double that, from my experience, from people who don't.

Things like that are a luxury when your product is the only worthwhile one in a genre. When you have competition, you can't consider it a luxury, even if it isn't as imperative as some other things.

tl;dr I'm not actually interested in playing Cleric in Ashes, I am interested in playing Shadow Disciple specifically. Intrepid considers this level of freedom and build variety to be important, so I hold them to that.

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And my point is that you don't need to know how Rogue works to start considering that.

You were able to go 'for the sake of argument let's give Rogue Augments these things'.

If I, as a Shadow Disciple, looked at the Rogue Augments and didn't like any of them, that wouldn't really need to affect nor rely on Rogue's moment-to-moment gameplay design at all.

No one with /Cleric needs to care about the specifics of how a Cleric Primary heals people because they're not even allowed to do it the same way. So I don't think Primaries need to be fleshed out, for work on Augments to begin. If anything I'd do it the other way, because they don't have to work as hard to make 'all' Rogues to 'feel like Rogues', but they have to work at least 5x as hard to make all /Rogues feel like they're getting something that 'feels like being /Rogue'.

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No, I'm saying it's the other way around.

Let's look at something really esoteric like Fighter because I'm sure people agree way less on what exactly Fighter should generally have.

If everyone using Fighter Secondary wants something that boosts their Martial Skills/Physical Damage or such, and you as a designer go 'Well sorry but we don't think Fighters get that so we're giving it to Rangers' then you messed up.

Fighter's base kit has expectations. Fighter as secondary has expectations that are the same or greater than the base kit ones. If your designer is wobbling on 'whether or not to give Fighters Bloodlust', it's just as valid (if not more) to ask /Fighters if they want 'Bloodlust'.

All you need to know here is 'general expectations', and then you work. And since Augments are 'more work' whereas Active Skills and Primaries are 'specifics of gameplay flows that you tweak', there's no reason to wait too long on Augment design.

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This would be impossible/stupid in Ashes of Creation, so I simply never considered it.

A game that offers massive customization, the ability to use any weapon, and supposedly diverse playstyles? You just wouldn't do something as dumb as 'well let's not bother giving this class any of that'.

A rigid class system can lead to that, sure. But no serious designer would do that. Just as no serious designer would make an Augment system in that way.

I'm aware this isn't a helpful answer, but I can't be more helpful. I play good games with lots of variability. Sure, those games have metas, or 'common builds', but those are always just for people who don't want to think or adapt much. AoC is striving to be the opposite of that.

If you tell me you are making a Summoner, there should be certain baseline assumptions I can make if you want me to take your game seriously. And I'm saying those baseline assumptions are enough to work with, for Augments.

Dygz, it might be important for you to know that if you're trying to speak of it 'concretely'...

The devs actually don't yet know the Augment Schools for each secondary with certainty. Steven was asked to provide the ones for Bard in the Bard stream and gave an answer that very specifically 'provided two, then clarified that they had not decided on the other two yet'.

This is where a lot of my concern has been coming from, at least.

I'm not willing to assume that they know/have decided all four of the Augment Schools for ... anything, actually, but definitely if Steven gave an equivalent answer for Rogue, I would not be surprised.

(if you interpreted that answer differently for some reason, I'd like to hear your thoughts on why)

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Ok, a brief step back, actually.

There's a difference between 'does only deal physical damage' and 'can only deal physical damage'. I feel like I approached this wrong by going along with a hypothetical that I thought was more abstract than it was, so, to simplify...

"If you tell players they are going to get a BattleMage, a lot of them are going to assume they get to do more physical damage or alter some of their spells to be more physical. If you then design a Mage class that has no path to that, you have failed. If you design a Mage class with a clear path to that, you have automatically opened the path for the related augments."

Either way, your logic is completely right from the bases you're assuming. I just don't share them, and that's fine, that's been the disagreement for the whole thread, I think. I'm used to this being done, and how it's done. I don't know if you are or not, but as long as you don't believe AoC will 'obviously' do it that way, I think your stance is totally right.

Ah, well, I'm truly sorry to hear that then. Carry on.

It's not like we are all telling Intrepid what to do. If we tell them stuff in advance, 90% of the time, it's just going to be the same thing we were going to tell them when they showed off whatever it was. Classes are about a feeling that a player is looking for when they're trying to play your game. If I want to be a Song Warden, it's only because I think that Song Warden is going to be the thing I want to play. That thing I want to play is already in my mind.

Even if Intrepid has a different way of achieving that (maybe I'm a Trickster instead), I'm still going to end up giving them feedback that I want one of their classes to let me play the way I want. So I don't care about people who think that I shouldn't get to play the way I want in a game like Ashes, because all those people are telling me is that I should find a different game to play. And since I have games that let me do what I want already, it's up to Intrepid to provide the same or close enough if they want me to play.